Random Musings about Colony Season 3

I’ve watched Colony season 3 episode 1 twice now and I’m ready to talk about it. I also have some thoughts, predictions and hopes (mostly hopes) for season 3.

Random Observations on Colony season 3 episode 1

I like how they give clues in the episode titles. This one is called Maquis, which refers to the French Resistance members who lived in hiding in the woods.

The Bowmans’ truck has a California license plate on it.

Interesting that in season 2 we kept hearing that they wanted the gauntlet back at all costs, but now they want the missing Host. So, Noa said “we have a RAP,” but I guess I thought this was a secret, that this RAP had made his intentions known to the resistance but that his contemporaries didn’t know he was intending to defect. So either I was wrong or the RAP finally decided to fully defect.

Bram is so smart. He’s figured out the electronics of this radio, even if he hasn’t cracked the number code or taken seriously the risk that broadcasting might bring to his family. He also seems almost too comfortable with the gun and his “we’re clear” remark made him sound like a professional. He’s still a teenager and he hasn’t had recent access to cop TV shows so where did this come from? Has Will been training him?

Pet Peeves

I just have to get these off my chest. I love this show, don’t get me wrong, but there are a few things that really stretch my imagination.

I think it’s funny how these apocalypse shows forget or just don’t know how gasoline is supplied to us (I include The Walking Dead and its spin-off show in this comment, and really, they’ve taken the lead on this so I guess the Colony creators can’t be blamed). If there are really people hiding out and living outside the colonies, I think most of the relatively small amout of gasoline available would be gone by now (“Now” is a year and a half after the occupation began, after all). Yet the Bowmans have a huge gas-guzzling truck with gas in the tank and also electricity (read the comment below about that).

They have electricity in the cabin (or does that huge tape player run on batteries)? How can that be possible? A really quiet generator and an unlimited supply of gasoline? At least they showed Snyder cooking the eggs on a propane-fueled camp stove out on the porch.

I think a walking droid that is as seemingly powerful as this one is should be equipped with some sort of vision that identifies heat signatures. So it can scan the area and notice, for example, three grown humans hiding under some camouflaging, if not also three more humans (albeit slightly smaller ones) hiding in “the shelter” which we don’t see so we don’t know if it’s underground or not).

Where did they get the chickens? I’m not an expert on farm animals, but it seems like if chickens are left un-tended for a year and a half, they would probably die or be eaten by predators, so it’s not likely the Bowmans are likely to just happen on a farm with a coop full of chickens.

The other people using the radio are using code. Presumably so the authorities who might be listening won’t know their secrets. Not just their location but what they’re saying, what they’re planning. So, since they’re in a moving truck, Bram isn’t really giving away their location because in a few minutes, they’ll be elsewhere. But the location and time of the meeting has now been announced on the air. Though I guess it doesn’t matter since Snyder will probably turn them in anyway.

Questions about Colony season 3

These questions are some that are raised by this Colony season 3 episode 1 specifically, and some that are just questions I’m hoping they deal with in this season.

If the Bowmans meet some resistance members and give them the gauntlet but don’t learn the location of the missing Host, what will Snyder do then? Offer to join the resistance so he can get the Host’s location? I kind of don’t think that will happen, but I’m just sayin’.

What is the deal with the orange survey flags? Were they already there when the Bowmans arrived and just serve as a convenient marker or did the Bowmans put them up and, if so, why so many?

Why is Will so special? and related thoughts and questions

I have so many thoughts and questions about this topic that I decided to make a separate section just for this one question.

First, I want to just list some observations:

We know the drones didn’t kill Will and Charlie on the wall even when it killed others, and again the drone didn’t kill Broussard even when it killed the members of the Red Hand. We also know Will and Broussard share a lot in common with regard to skills and general professional experience.

Some have theorized that Will wasn’t killed because he was employed by Homeland, and then supposed that maybe Broussard wasn’t killed because they wanted to get him alive and get information from him. But the walker drone killed the grey hats or whoever they were who were near the Bowman’s cabin, so I think that rules out not killing collaborators as a theory.

We see a man in the San Fernando bloc being found, subdued and put into one of those pod things, and of course there was another one of those pod things in the SUV with the computer dossier. And we know the pods were sent off planet to the Hosts, though that one delivery was presumably destroyed by the bomb when Maya and her friends blew it up.

Here are some thoughts and partial theories:

I have a theory that the “preschool teacher” that Will and Devon captured and turned over to Solomon and his group was destined for one of those pods, also. If it were simply a case of finding people to go to the Factory, they wouldn’t have to be as selective, they could round up anyone they didn’t like or who broke the rules or whatever. But Devon was given a name and location and the man who was also in that apartment was not the target, just the woman. So it follows that the woman was singled out for some reason.

We see Carlos and others being readied for the Factory: they are stripped and treated with some kind of gas or radiation. I’m sure this is meant to evoke images of the gas chambers of the Holocaust, but they are not killed. It may just be to kill some kind of germs. Contrast that to what we observe with the pod people: they are also stripped but they are fitted with a device that covers their nose and mouth and presumably fills their lungs with that green goo we see the girl coughing up in the distribution center of the labor camp in season 2. She’s clearly still alive, however, so the goo didn’t drown her — it’s some kind of liquid oxygen or at least it contains oxygen. My theory is that these pods are going into space, the vacuum of space (the Factory is not a vacuum, clearly). The liquid would give them needed oxygen and keep their lungs from being crushed. The concept of humans breathing liquid is still mostly science fiction but Colony isn’t the first to propose such a thing.

My conclusion is that those singled out to be put into the pods are not going to the Factory. They’re going directly into space. If we think just of Will and Broussard’s professional backgrounds, it seems like maybe they would be made into soldiers somehow, but the others listed in the dossier were a trauma surgeon, an engineer, a machinist and a programmer, so there’s more going on and we probably need more information in order to make a hypothesis.

A note on the Factory: Snyder tells Will that there were rumors at IGA that they were building space-based weapons (which Will seems to think would be for defense but which could just as well be for offense). And that may be the case, but remember what we saw about the factory in season 1, when we saw Carlos up there. I watched this scene closely several times so I can tell you what I observed: the workers (all men that we can see) are clothed in some form of protective clothing, including gloves and a mask. So they are presumably working with something toxic or something the hosts don’t want contaminated with human germs. The toxic theory is further supported by a scene where one of the workers starts coughing up blood and is very reluctantly taken away. The implication is that he’ll be euthanized because he doesn’t want to go, and he’s already in the Factory so what is he being taken to that’s worse? Getting back to the work being done, we see a double line of huge tanks, each of which has a large valve opening near the bottom. We see workers manipulating the controls of the valves and attaching large hoses to some of them. We see workers with carts on which are small containers of various sizes and shapes. This looks much more like a chemical factory than some kind of weapons factory.

My cable TV company has several short videos on their On Demand section along with the Colony episodes. One of them just showed up along with episode 1. It tells a lot about what Broussard is up to (I’ll keep that part to myself for now) and then it tells some things about Snyder, narrated by Peter Jacobson. He talks mostly about how Snyder is trying to survive and calls him a “super hero survivor” in this season. But he also says something interesting about the Hosts. He says that what we learn about the aliens’ plans for Earth and the Earthlings will “blow our minds.” I, personally, am looking forward to having my mind blown.